For the Layman — What is the Cloud (Part 2)

Understanding the cloud in simple terms

This article was originally published on my blog — https://kislayverma.com/for-the-layman/for-the-layman-ep-2-what-is-the-cloud/

Hello everyone!

In this episode of the “For the layman” series, I am going to discuss what the “cloud” is. We’ve all heard of iCloud, AWS, cloud computing etc, and understand the power of their ubiquitous presence. Let’s understand the history and the mechanics of the Cloud a little more.

tl;dr — The Cloud is Uber for computers. It is made up of hundreds of thousands of computers (aka servers) that users can rent out to run their software in exchange for a regular fee — mostly based on usage. Cloud companies take care of running the hardware with all kinds of best practices so that software developers and software development companies don’t have to and can focus on their core work.

Have you ever seen one of those high intensity surgery scenes in movies where the doctor keeps shouting at the nurses “Give me a clamp” or “Give me 5cc of <insert medicine name>”? For the longest time, software development used to be like (only less high stakes for the most part). Programmers would write awesome applications that could eat the world. But running these awesome apps required big computers. So while the programmer finished writing the last line of code or polishing the last bit of documentation (HAHAHAHA), she would start screaming, “Give me a big…